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But when lawyers told Mr. Malamud and Mr. Swartz that they appeared to have broken no laws, Mr. Malamud sent Mr. Swartz a message saying, “You should just lay l

• ajju 17y ago
  Either they think it is illegal or what is more likely is that anytime a sysadmin at a federal facility sees "atypical" behavior (as defined by them) they contact the feds. It is very unlikely that a sysadmin in the federal court system would think about whether the crawling session overloading his server is legal, forget moral and I am sure if he/she complains, the FBI is obligated to investigate. I am not saying this is what should happen but this is what likely happened.
  • eli 17y ago
    Well, yeah, and those fees they're missing out on indirectly fund that sysadmin's department.
• gojomo 17y ago
  Interpretation of 'unauthorized access' is murky and there's a lot -- too much -- discretion in how access legitimacy and damages are evaluated. (See also: the submission last week about an author's estimation most people commit 'three felonies a day'.) In this matter, I'd bet the NYTimes coverage was more valuable in deterring prosecution than any legal counsel or even influential friends -- it meant any trumped-up narrative of nefarious intent would be fighting an uphill battle against the story already started in 'the paper of record'.